Nothing Tangible To Gain
by dreamgurl
Summary: A one-shot explaining Chuck's POV in 2.20 - what was going through his head that made his sleep with Vanessa? Firmly Chuck and Blair, don't worry.


**Nothing Tangible To Gain**  
**Summary: **Just me trying to fill in the gaps between Blair exiting the party in 2.20, and Chuck sleeping with Vanessa. What was he thinking?  
**Author's Note: **I didn't know whether to put this is CB or as just Chuck, but since it's mostly about her (and I want people to read it, lol), I decided on tagging them both.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own the characters, the show, or the song this title comes from.

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_Does it comfort you to know you fought the good fight?  
Basking in your victory, hollow and alone.  
While you boast your bitter bragging rights to anyone who'll listen.  
While you're left with nothing tangible to gain.  
-- __**Dashboard Confessional**__, "The Good Fight"_

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He watches her go, walking briskly out of his bedroom with the cold sting of rejection on her face, and he thinks he should follow. Follow her home and tell her to forget about finding her spark in Nate's foggy marshland – he's got her spark right here. It never went away; he was just hiding it for awhile, like the idiot he is.

He should just go up to her and say those three words, eight letters – those eight letters, three syllables that he knows will solve everything. No matter what she said earlier that morning, he knows they'll work. The offer still stands. And they're true, right? He feels them, so why not say them? He gets Blair, Blair gets him, and Nate gets nothing except for a hole in Brooklyn to crawl back into with Vanessa. Everyone wins.

But then he thinks about everything he's put her through, thinks about her sad lips and her earnest eyes when she told him she'd fought long and hard for him, and he wonders if it would even be the right thing to do. Being with Nate was easy, she'd said. A vacation. And after the hell that she went through loving him, didn't she deserve a rest?

He knew Nate would eventually reconsider and head Blair's way to profess a love that was undying for at least another three weeks. He was like a stray puppy that way, following anyone who was willing to feed him. Chuck could get there before Nate did, sure, and make Blair fall for him all over again. But something about that scenario felt off.

The problem was that Nate was in the picture now. And with Nate involved, there would be comparisons, and there shouldn't be. He was Blair's one and only, he knew, and she was his. Nate was just a thing to pass the time, always had been. He would just have to ride this one out and wait for her to get bored of Nate and come back to him.

_If she ever does…_ the traitorous voice in his head nagged. Blair was famous for her ability to create a fantasy world and trap herself inside of it with no way out. And Nate Archibald was the **perfect** fantasy – the one she had built up since she was twelve. He was a rising star: a Vanderbilt with rock-hard abs and a shining future in politics full of people smarter than him telling him what to say. And what was Chuck? Just a washed-up, orphaned womanizer who didn't even get to control his father's company. Pathetic.

Thinking over his current situation, he decided he could maybe use a vacation, too. He had tried to run away from his problems (ie; from Blair) with that call girl – what was her name again? – but that had failed spectacularly. As usual, he had ended up right back where he began.

What he needed was something easy; something satisfying that could serve him as some kind of hollow victory. He knew Blair didn't deserve any kind of vengeance – she deserved nothing but some shallow respite. But he still wanted to believe he could stir some jealousy in her – have some proof that her feelings for him were still there, just buried deep beneath the façade of her perfection.

But it wasn't Blair his vengeance was aimed at, not really. As he watched Nate stalk away from Vanessa and leave her empty and hopeless, he wondered what he had ever seen in that golden boy full of many investments and few returns. For as long as he could remember, he had shared everything with Nate: his hotel room, his money, his tales of debauchery, his marijuana – hell, they had even shared Blair at one point. And for all that, what did he ever get back? Not even the decency of a heads-up that he was about to take the one thing Chuck was counting on for even a chance at happiness.

Vanessa walked up to him with heavy lids and a defeated expression, and he knew she was thinking the same thing.

"I don't know if I hate him or myself more," she sighed.

He shook off his thoughts of Blair (not that they would ever really leave him, damnit), donned his devious grin, and replied.

"Why don't we work that out together… in my bedroom?"

----


End file.
